Sports fan. Connoisseur of good music (especially on vinyl). Consumer of the finest craft beers. Environmental activist. History geek. Dudeist Priest. Hunter S. Thompson junkie. And I write a little. Mostly though, I’m a dad. But I am unlike my dad. I am still the breadwinner, but laundry, cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, hugging, crying, disciplining and nurturing are also part of my routine. I am a domestic machine…I am, like many dads of my generation, The Domestic Warrior.

Wednesday, August 8, 2018

At What Cost

As published in The County Times (countytimes.somd.com)

By Ronald N. Guy Jr.

A friend of mine, we’ll call him Conscience (it’ll
make more sense later), loves college basketball and football. March Madness
dominates his spring; on fall Saturdays he’s happier than a seagull with a
French fry.Conscience, a native of
Indiana, roots for the Indiana Hoosiers on the hardwood and the Notre Dame
Fighting Irish on the gridiron.He’ll
bend your ear about both, whether you want him to or not.

Conscience is a pal and a peer.We are both husbands and fathers and are just
two months apart in age.Our
conversations are effortless.We talk
about life, families and music.But
mostly, we talk about sports.I
faithfully listen to his diatribes on the Hoosiers and the Irish; he faithfully
listens to mine on all things D.C. sports.It works.Hand and glove.Peanut butter and jelly.Wings and beer.The media and the president.Errr…

In recent years, our discussions about sports, and
particularly college sports, have grown noticeably more cynical.We are at an interesting crossroads in life –
young enough to remember when major college sports were still amateur athletics
but now old enough to have lost all naïveté about the nasty business they’ve
become.Seedings, matchups, recruits and
playful bantering used to dominate our interactions.Now we often find ourselves debating scandals
and corruption - USC football, UNC basketball, vacated championships, Rick
Pitino’s disgraced exit from Louisville after a series of egregious missteps (infidelity,
sex parties and under-the-table shoe deals), the latest SEC football recruiting
violations, the FBI’s wide-ranging investigation of NCAA basketball, Baylor
football and the absolute horror that is Larry Nasser and Michigan State.

True to this twisted new age, the next time I see
Conscience the issue du jour likely won’t be the fast approaching college
football season - it will be Urban Meyer and Ohio State University.

Meyer, the head coach at OSU, is on administrative
leave after misrepresenting (to be kind) what he knew and when he knew about the
2015 domestic abuse allegations against former assistant coach Zach Smith at
the B1G conference’s recent media day.In
his flummoxed response to a direct question, Meyer acknowledged that he knew
about 2009 domestic violence allegations against Smith (while both were at the
University of Florida) but said he learned of the 2015 accusations a day before
the press conference.Since then, text
messages have emerged between Smith’s and Meyer’s wives in the 2015 timeframe
and Smith has admitted that he told Meyer about the allegations in 2015.

Best case: Meyer was disingenuous.Worst case: Meyer aided and abetted a
domestic abuser for at least three years.

Whatever the outcome of the on-going investigation,
Meyer’s inability to precisely and accurately articulate what he knew and what
he and the university did about it was wholly inadequate.Is Meyer disgracefully ignorant of Ray Rice,
Greg Hardy and all the public service announcements the NFL shot to combat
domestic violence?Did he somehow miss
the #MeToo movement?Did he bury his
head during the Larry Nassar conviction and fallout at Michigan State, a sister
B1G school?Is he that callous?That clueless about violence against women?

Time will answer these questions about Meyer’s
character. The immediate question for
Ohio State and the question that will linger for all college institutions,
professional teams and sports fans around the country is this: What is the
price of winning?Is it victory at all
cost?Or is there some ethical and moral
foundation that simply cannot be compromised in the pursuit of rings, banners
and trophies?

As Conscience and I have watched the college sports we
love degrade into a cesspool of corruption, we have reached this conclusion:
throw enough money, power and fame up for grabs and it will inevitably bring
out the worst in our species.That holds
true for sports, politics and damn near every facet of life.What are we willing to compromise to get what
we want?When does conscience kick in –
that point when the method of winning trumps the raw lust for winning itself?